The world lost a man last week whose passing was marked with sad and loving words by space freaks and TV/movie geeks of several generations.

And today the Blog of Funny Names must bow its head to the legend of Leonard Nimoy, a man who through the wonderful mind of Gene Roddenberry and TV cameras of NBC on Sept. 8, 1966, brought the U.S. a pointy-eared Vulcan by the name of Spock.

Logic prevailed for 83 years.

This emotionless crew member stood at the side of Captain James Kirk on the Starship Enterprise through space frontier expeditions and escapades. You might be surprised to discover Star Trek ran for just three seasons. But it lived on in syndication, and spawned future generations of TV shows and crews, and then became a movie, with sequels and more evolution.

Leonard Nimoy, a funny name, playing Spock, a funny name, became part of a serious phenomena.

Colorful on NBC. (From iMDb)

He was the lone alien on that rainbow bridge of humanity — William Shatner as Captain Kirk, DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy, George Takei as helmsman Sulu, James Doohan as chief engineer Scotty, Nichelle Nichols as chief communications officer Uhura and Walter Koenig as navigator Chekov) — being beamed up from trouble by Scotty. He was Spock. He could not escape it.

In fact, he wrote two autobiographies about it.

From his Feb. 27 obituary by Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times:

“Yet he also acknowledged ambivalence about being tethered to the character, expressing it most plainly in the titles of two autobiographies: I Am Not Spock, published in 1977, and I Am Spock, published in 1995. In the first, he wrote, ‘In Spock, I finally found the best of both worlds: to be widely accepted in public approval and yet be able to continue to play the insulated alien through the Vulcan character.’ ”

But his ears aren’t pointy! (Getty Images)

Then this kid growing up in the Star Trek TV era had issues further complicated when siblings were born and I heard parents talking about methods suggested by Spock.

It took awhile to figure out that my two younger sisters were not being Vulcanized but rather they and even I may have been being made aware of principles set forth by one Dr. Benjamin Spock.

This funny name wrote, too, and Baby and Child Care is one of the biggest selling books of all time. Says WikiPedia: “Spock was the first pediatrician to study psychoanalysis to try to understand children’s needs and family dynamics. His ideas about childcare influenced several generations of parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children, and to treat them as individuals.”

How wonderful that Parade Magazine interviewed Spock and Spock in 1977. (Getty Images)

It goes on to add how he was an advocate for ending the Vietnam War, and that he won an Olympic gold medal in rowing in 1924. Another good Spock in my book, this doctor-writer with the funny last name who died in 1998 at the age of 94.

Leonard Nimoy was 83 when he died from pulmonary disease, the actor a smoker, ironic considering his stoic Vulcan character that made him famous.

And yes, this funny-named fellow was plenty famous. You have to be to get an obituary in the New York Times with a paragraph like this: “His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and blessing: “Live long and prosper” (from the Vulcan “Dif-tor heh smusma”).”

A while ago I was playing my vintage 1980 edition of Trivial Pursuit with some friends, facing down typically challenging questions about obscure names of pigeon friends in 1960s television shows. On one of these question cards came one of those names you always hope to find in your daily life. Ebenezer Butterick.

Mr. Butterick was one of the biggest names in fashion in the late 1880s, in many senses of the word. Frustrated with the difficulty of measuring and scaling home made clothing, Ebenezer and his wife Ellen Augusta Pollard Butterick came up with tissue paper dress patterns to make the job easier. This revolutionized home sewing and quickly made the couple very wealthy.

The very fashionable Mr. Ebenezer Butterick.

Ebenezer was a tailor by trade and therefore fully familiar with sizing up custom patterns to fit any individual, and set about creating a sewing empire with his simple, yet revolutionary invention.

The Buttericks eventually formed the Butterick Company, which among its many achievements once held the record for the world’s largest electric sign that hung off the side of their custom build ButterickBuilding in New York City. The sign had more than 1400 electric lights, and required a full time staff member of the company to constantly monitor it and replace burned out lights.

As you probably figured out by now, the author of this piece really knows nothing at all about sewing and the power and beauty of the Buttericks’ invention is a bit lost on me. However, I wouldn’t pass up any chance to salute their fine achievement of building a good idea into a giant funnily named company.

I’m not an expert, but I think this is a different type of sewer.

Butterick, as fitting a fashion icon, wore an impressive huge beard and also founded the Metropolitan fashion magazine, mostly to promote his own patterns. He died in 1903, the same year the company’s Manhattan headquarters was finished. The Butterick-McCall company is still a major player in fabrics, proudly carrying its founders’ name now in its third century. And that’s the power of a great name.

“Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.”–Winston Churchill

In the beginning, there was Outerbridge Horsey. And Outerbridge Horsey begat Outerbridge Horsey, Jr., who begat Outerbridge Horsey III, who begat Outerbridge Horsey IV and so on through Outerbridge Horsey VII, who still lives today. And collectively, The Horseys begat the blog of Funny Names which became the bible of funny names.

Now, unto us a king is given. Behold a new dawn and a New Testament of funny names.

I give you, Oliphant Chuckerbutty. Or in full, Soorjo Alexander William Langobard Oliphant Chuckerbutty. (note: he apparently also was known at times as Wilson Oliphant, but why he would ever go by anything other than Oliphant Chuckerbutty is beyond me.).

No, not that Oliphant.

The esteemed Mr. Chuckerbutty (1884-1960) was a church and cinema organist, as well as composer of organ music. He was best known for, well, not much other than an awesome name. He did write a brief treatise for young aspiring cinema organists and a single one of his compositions has survived in the classical organist repertory. Unfortunately for his legacy, there has been no call for cinema organists since the invention of talkies in the late 1920’s. And here’s an interesting puzzle: if the World Wide Web has only existed since the 1980’s, how is it that his ancient document entitled To be or not to be–A Cinema Organist is available on line (here)? Would anyone in his right mind actually publish this relic today? No. Aliens definitely walk among us; they built the internet hundreds of years ago and hid it from us until this exposee on The Blog of Funny Names.

There’s not much else to tell about Mr. Chuckerbutty. His grandfather was a journalist named William Oliphant–which might lead one to speculate that he was a relative of the political cartoonist Pat Oliphant. It might; I have no idea. Or maybe he was the inspiration for Tolkien’s oliphants. I suspect that would actually be the organist in the You Tube video below.

More of my silliness can always be found in The Millennium Conjectures.Through the alien miracle of the internet, you don’t have to endure me in person.

Ignore for a moment the obscene gesture (that is a middle finger… or third phalange for the sticklers out there) and recognize that that’s not what a finger is supposed to look like!

Unfortunately, this will have to be a slightly abridged FNITN because of a rather peculiar circumstance. Last Friday, during an intramural med school Capture The Flag game, the BoFN’s very own oddball white guy Dave (yours truly) made a game-saving tackle and suffered a finger injury. Not really suffered, actually… I did my best to ignore it for a week but the swelling and pain wouldn’t subside.

Well, after a doctor’s visit yesterday, I found out it was actually a fracture, and will likely require a minimally invasive hand surgery that I will heroically endure with hopefully only local anesthetic (so as to not cost me important studying days).

This means that it’ll be a short FNITN because I’m typing with a finger splint on and that ain’t easy folks! It ain’t!

Chimamanda and her funny-faced 2-dimensional friend!

Leeeeeeeading off is one of my new favorite Americans… Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of the National Books Circle Award for Fiction (which comes a close second to Blog of Funny Names Induction in the pantheon of literary greatness). She recently published a short story, Olikoye, for a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation collection about the wonders of vaccinations – one of science’s greatest achievements.

Funny name, award-winning writer, and a supporter of a cause very close to my heart… definitely my kind of lady!

From really important societal issues to… well, this… it turns out that Queen Elizabeth’s newest horse is named Carltonlima Emma. I think the noteworthy part of this story is that Queen Elizabeth still rides her horse at age 88, but in my perfect world – one where funny names supersede everything, and we invest significant money in research grants for health sciences – Carltonlima Emma is the true highlight of the story. To be fair, why don’t we just celebrate both the Queen and her faithful steed – they’re both pretty awesome!

In political news, a leak of info from former HSBC IT employee Herve Falciani could be the determining factor in whether Loretta Lynch gets sworn in as US Attorney General.

Lastly, one of Google’s greatest visionaries, Vint Cerf (who we’ve profiled here before) warns of an “internet dark age“, saying that server limitations and the rapid turnover of popular websites (faster than we can archive them), could result in years of digital data getting lost. His recommendation: print out your files and photos for added backup!

But I think we know his true motivation… Vint wants there to be a print edition of the Blog of Funny Names, and who can blame him?!?!?!

Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart(1880 – 1963) was a British Army officer who served in the Boer War, WWI, and WWII. He was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; tunneled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; survived two plane crashes, and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them (per wikipedia).

This man could out-roundhouse kick Chuck Norris.

So let’s backtrack. Born in 1880 to an affluent family, he initially studied law at Oxford, but raging testosterone got the better of him and he quit the university in 1899 to get his fighting on in the Second Boer War, aka the Tweede Boereoorlog. He entered the army under the false name of “Trooper Carton”, and claimed to be 25, instead of the teen he was.

After sustaining wounds to the stomach and groin, Carton de Wiart was sent to an invalid home. However, he soldiered up and, in 1901, became an officer in the 4th Royal Dragoon Guards. In 1908, he married Countess Friederike Maria Karoline Henriette Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen. You read that right.

In WWI, he fought with the Army’s “Camel Corps” in British Somaliland, tackling an uprising by supporters of Mohammed bin Abdullah, dubbed the “Mad Mullah.” While attacking an enemy fort, he was shot in the face and lost his left eye – forcing him to wear a black patch for the rest of his life. His gallantry earned him the DSO (Distinguished Service Order). Not one to rest on his silver-gilted medal, he headed out to the bloody trenches of the Western Front to command infantry battalions. In 1915, he lost his left hand after being hit by shrapnel. Despite this loss, he later stated, “Frankly I had enjoyed the war.”

Between world wars, he remained in the military. In 1940, Carton de Wiart was sixty years old, the prime age to lead an operation to take the Norwegian city of Trondheim to halt the German advance. When supply lines collapsed, the mission failed. But Wiart remained undeterred. More battles were to come. While he was busy dodging Nazi bombardment in WWII, a German bomber flattened his London home and all his possessions, including his military medals, were destroyed (per dailymail.co/uk).

In 1941, on his way to lead the British Military Mission in Yugoslavia, his plane crashed into the sea a mile off the coast of Libya, an Italian colony. Once in the water, he thought, “I’m not going out like that,” then paddled ashore with his one good hand, but was captured and sent to a POW camp in Italy. Despite not speaking Italian and having an identifiable eye patch, he made five escape attempts, once eluding capture for eight days. Released in 1943, Winston Churchill sent him as his special representative to China.

Here he is with Churchill and FDR. He’s the one with the eye patch and no hand.

wikipedia

In his memoirs, he wrote, “We are told that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I know which of these weapons I would choose.” He retired in 1947 and died in 1963, aged 83, presumably on stage, dropping the mike, and saying, “Peace out.”